batteries

[beeboater]

I would like to move my batteries (2) from the stern to in front of my center console to transfer some weight forward. My boat is a wellcraft 190 CC with a 150 hp outboard. How long can the battery leads be? I would have to add 9 ft. of 4 gauge wire to achieve this.

 

[ddrieck]

Re: batteries

This may be a common sense thing but here goes.

Longer the run the bigger the cable.

 

[Splat]

Re: batteries

Yea 4 gauge is probally large enough. Hard to tell without my reference sheet in front of me. I would lookinto doing it right however. What I mean is if your going to move the batteries to in front of the counsle you could just run from the battery back to where the old cables are. This would be a hack job in my opinion.

I would run a new cable( could even cut and reuse the old one) to the console since its now a MUCH shorter run. I would then run a new dedicated cable back to the motor. If you have a troller wired I would run the wires accordingly. The reason I would do it this way is DC experiances line loss is relatively short runs. And electronics especially your VHF pumping out 5watts can be finicky with long wire runs from the power source if the wiring isn't up to it.

Bill

 

[jhebert]

Re: batteries

In any distribution system in which the supply voltage is below 50-Volt DC, the size of the conductor needed will be dictated more by the allowable voltage drop than by the maximum current capacity needed.

The farther you move the batteries away from their most important load, the starter motor of your outboard, the larger you will have to make the wiring in order to avoid excessive voltage drop.

I recommend you abandon the original cables completely. Do not use them as part of the system. Because the original cables are sized to just about the maximum allowable voltage drop permitted, using them in conjunction with extension cables means the voltage drop in the extension cables will have to be very very small. This means the extension cables will have to be very very large. This also means very very expensive.